


The 2nd Law: Isolated System

by DeviantMoose



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game), Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst and Humor, Bad Decisions, Depression, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Other, Pararibulitis (Dirk Gently), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 16:54:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19380865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeviantMoose/pseuds/DeviantMoose
Summary: Hank's life is boring. Dull. Uninteresting. Tedious. Monotonous. Mind-numbingly, high-school-maths-class level boring. Nothing has happened to him in the past eleven years besides a quick foray into depression and suicidal tendencies mixed with a bit of alcoholism just for an added flair.Boring.So when he finds himself in the centre of a murder plot, surrounded by holistic whatever-the-fucks, he's just a little bit flabbergasted. And dreadfully unprepared. Maybe a little uncooperative, now that he thinks about it.But everything is connected, right? Maybe this'll be the key to his success.Maybe.





	The 2nd Law: Isolated System

**Author's Note:**

> So.  
> Recently, I was rewatching Netflix's Dirk Gently for the seventh time and came to the conclusion that Connor and Dirk are basically the same person and thus, this dumbass crossover was born.  
> A quick warning that this may contain slight spoilers for the show, but the story will diverge from canon around chapter 3-5, so it won't necessarily spoil everything if you still want to watch DGHDA (which I highly recommend)
> 
> Also, another forewarning: this fic will contain elements of child abuse, PTSD and anxiety issues, depression, shitty life decisions, and some violence. If any of those things aren't your cup of tea, that's fine! The romantic aspect of the story isn't extremely, blatantly obvious, so if you dislike Hank/Connor pairings I don't think this should be too uncomfortable for you.

There’s a phone call in the night.

Now, this isn’t a strange occurrence. Connor is used to the phone calls. He’s had many an interesting conversation with telemarketers at midnight—conversations that generally consist of him educating them about the ways of the Universe and talking until he realises that they’ve already hung up and he’s talking to nobody but himself.

He keeps his phone next to his bed, see, because there’s always a possibility that somebody from another dimension might need help, and they also might have figured out how to decode the message he programmed into his satellite for such unlikely events. But also because sometimes the telemarketers are nice and let him talk to them until he can fall asleep again, and sometimes all he can do to make himself tired is talk and talk and talk until his mouth hurts and so does his brain.

At Blackwing, they used to get sick of his talking.

Anyway, normal happenstances aside, there’s an odd phone call at approximately midnight on the eleventh of November. Connor is awake because he’s always awake. He expects it to be a stranger wanting to steal his credit card number that _he_ stole from a nice old lady in Colorado, but what he gets is _much_ more interesting.

“Hello?”

_“Get your things,”_

And then, without preamble:

_“Connor, it’s time.”_

He doesn’t think he’s ever scrambled out of bed faster before in his current life.

 

~~~

 

Hank always wanted to be a detective.

As a kid, he’d watched his dad come home from his work at the DPD and thought for sure that, one day in the future, it would be _him_ returning from a day of crime-solving to a family he loved and who loved him in return. He used to stay up with his dad and watch crime shows until they both fell asleep, and his sisters would wake them up in the morning with shouting and punching. Hank had always wanted to help people, solve crimes, and catch bad guys like some sort of legal superhero.

Then, when Hank’s dad had died— _killed himself_ because of some disease called Pararibulitis, Hank had sworn to make his father proud. Becoming a cop seemed like a good enough way to do so.

He’d gotten close, too. He’d gotten so damn close to achieving his childhood dream. He had the family thing locked down, and he’d been actively training for the Academy while earning enough money to support his wife and son. For a while. For a _while_ , things were great.

But, of course, as the Universe is an unstoppable murderous force with no sense of morals, everything went to shit and now Hank’s stuck working at a fancy hotel called the fucking ‘Perryman Grand’ for minimum wage, still trying to pay off his divorce debt eleven years later while also dealing with depression and maybe a very slight alcohol problem.

So. Like. Everything sucks, is what he’s saying.

But he already knew that everything sucks for everybody _else,_ he’d just hoped it wouldn’t suck for _him._ Again, though, the Universe is an unstoppable, murderous force with no sense of morals. It doesn’t matter whether he deserves it or not (even though he most definitely _does_ ), because life sucks, and at forty-three years old, he’s only just starting to realise this. There’s always a new problem, a new issue taking up his free time, and it’s always petty bullshit.

But that’s life. And life sucks.

 

“Where’s my _money_?”

Hank groans and runs a hand over his face, blinking the gunk out of his eyes as he wakes up to greet the dreary morning. There’s a water stain on the ceiling above his lumpy bed, and he stares up at it for a moment, debating whether getting up is even worth it.

“I want my money!”

His landlord Pedro’s screaming drifts up to him through the broken window, and he decides that no, getting up really _isn’t_ worth it today. Work can wait; it’s not like he does anything there anyway—apart from disappoint his boss, and his boss’ boss, and his boss’ boss’ boss, and his—

A loud smash interrupts him before he can start spiralling, and he jolts into a sitting position, hissing when he feels his joints crack. Curse this lumpy mattress and everything it has to offer. Another sickening thumping noise, and Hank realises it sounds suspiciously like something being smashed. He looks out through the window next to his shitty bed and sighs as the sight confirms his suspicions.

Pedro is smashing Hank’s crappy old lemon to pieces with a baseball bat, and even from this distance, Hank can tell there are cracks forming on the windshield. Great.

“Get down here and give me my fucking money!”

_Fuckin’ hell, this is such bullshit._

Eyes widening by a degree, Hank stumbles out of bed and out into the small space that makes up his run-down apartment. There’s a mirror hung up on the wall just in front of the door, and Hank accidentally cops a look at how big of a mess he actually appears to be: he’s still wearing yesterday’s clothes, his hair is a mess, and the dark bags under his eyes are much more pronounced than usual—betraying the bone-deep exhaustion that’s been plaguing him for the past eleven years. He definitely hasn’t lost any weight recently, either, which shouldn’t be as much of a problem as it is, but old habits die hard, he supposes.

Hank sighs and leans against the doorframe for a moment before pushing off and staggering out the door into the hall.

He hurries out to the elevator only to find a huge ‘out of order’ sign hung over it. Because of _course_ the elevator is out of order. Groaning, Hank glances down at the stairwell, and back at his apartment door, silently debating whether losing his car is really that big of a deal.

It is.

He uses the stairs despite the protests from his joints—not able to let his car die with a good conscience. He’s had her for much too long to just let Pedro smash her to death. Especially because Pedro is an asshole, and Hank hates assholes. He can’t wait until the divorce is finalised and he gets a better job so he can get a better apartment, far away from Pedro and his plethora of problems.

Hank pushes through the front doors of his complex. It’s colder than usual; Hank regrets not changing before he came out, the threadbare t-shirt and old basketball shorts he’s wearing aren’t very good at protection against the climate. The splintering of glass and Pedro’s screams are so much louder outside, too, and the lingering hangover that always takes a little while to set in is _not_ happy about it, a headache already building behind his eyes.

Pedro doesn’t even turn to look at him when Hank approaches, too busy slamming a fucking baseball bat into Hank’s car. At first glance, Pedro doesn’t look strong enough to do any damage, but Hank’s not stupid, and he knows the effects of drugs better than most. The only reason he’s yet to report his landlord is fear of being murdered and/or getting kicked to the curb.

“Pedro! Stop!” Hank shouts, rushing over to jump in front of Pedro’s next swing, not flinching when the bat narrowly misses his stomach. He waves aggressively in Pedro’s face, catching the next swing of the bat with both hands. “Put the fucking bat down and we can talk this out!”

Pedro snarls and throws the bat to the ground with a clatter. He steps forward, and despite Pedro being about a head shorter than him, Hank backs away, hands outstretched in front of him, placating.

Hank knows he’s an intimidating man of an intimidating build—and he hasn’t done much to change that fact in about fifteen fucking years, to be fuckin’ honest—but somehow people like Pedro are the ones who are never affected by his height and broad shoulders and apparently scary-looking face. Patrons of his job and random strangers on the street give Hank a wide berth, sure, but intolerant, bastard assholes like his goddamn landlord are all brave and in his face almost constantly. It’s bullshit.

“Where’s my fucking rent, Hank?” Pedro demands, spitting. “My six-hundred bucks?”

Hank wipes Pedro’s spittle from his face, mildly disgusted. He tries to keep his voice calm, but it’s hard when his landlord is up in his face and he really doesn’t _want_ to be calm.

“I gave you your rent yesterday!” Hank says—and it’s _technically_ not a lie. Just because he’d taken it back afterwards doesn’t mean he hadn’t given it to Pedro in the first place. “I swear, Pedro!”

Pedro’s pretty stupid, but Hank still knows it was risky to steal his rent back, no matter how much he needed it. He’s _this close_ to being kicked to the curb at this point, and living on the streets isn’t something he thinks his ageing bones could handle in the slightest.

“Don’t you fuckin’ say you gave me the money yesterday! You dunno what happened yesterday! Are you a historian? _Are you a historian?”_

His voice is somehow rising even further, echoing in the parking lot. Hank resents his neighbours for not interfering, but he also can’t find it in him to blame them.

Hank steps further backwards. “No, Pedro, I’m not.”

Pedro’s hands flail, looking for something to punch. “ _No_! You don’t know what happened yesterday! Where’s my six-hundred bucks, Hank? Where’s my fucking money?”

Evidently, Hank hadn’t managed to fool him. Well, at least he’d made an effort. That’s more than he can say for most other things in life—which, really, isn’t that great when you think about it. If he makes an effort to hide theft but not to cut his hair or talk to his family, is he really deserving of his shitty apartment and shitty car?

“Listen, Pedro,” Hank says, hoping he doesn’t sound as frustrated and admittedly afraid as he feels. He just wants to lay down for a couple of days and forget about everything. Is that too much to ask? “I’ll get you the money, yeah? I’m getting paid today. It should cover the rent, I promise.”

He _hopes_ he’s getting paid today. At least, he will be if he can manage to convince his boss to give him this month’s paycheck early. And then he hopes he can get a raise.

Pedro glares at him, mouth curling into another snarl. He picks up the abandoned bat once again and jabs it into Hank’s chest. “You’d better get me my money, Hank. Do I look like a patient man to you? I want my fucking rent!”

“Got it.” Hank steps to the side, hands still outstretched. “I’ll get you your money by the end of the day, okay? You’ll have your six-hundred, and I’ll have my apartment, right?”

Pedro stares at him, breathing heavily, pupils dilated. His hand grips the baseball bat hard enough that his knuckles are pale white, and the handle of the bat creaks ominously. Hank may not have made it into the force, but he was in the academy for long enough to know that something’s off.

“Fuckin’ _fine!_ ” Pedro snaps after a few tense moments. He turns back to Hank’s poor car, and before Hank can stop him, Pedro’s swinging the bat once more, slamming it hard into the mirror on the side of the window, and it snaps off with a sickening _crunch_.

“That’s for being a fucking liar,” Pedro tells him darkly. “Don’t ever think you can _fuck_ with me, Hank.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Hank grits out, staring at the shattered mirror on the concrete. He and Pedro stare at each other for a while longer, until Hank wonders if something’s finally broken in his landlord’s fucked-up head

After Hank has grown quickly concerned for the mental stability of Pedro, his landlord spits in his face again, turns on his heel and stomps away, the bat swinging in his right hand as he storms back into his own house. Hank glances from his car to his clothes and back again, and, with a sigh he begrudgingly walks back inside, up the stairs, and into his apartment to get changed.

 

He takes the bus to work that day.

 

~~~

 

The sounds of metal slamming against brick fill the tiny room.

“Let me go! _Let me go! I NEED TO FIND ALICE!”_

 

~~~

 

The Perryman Grand is, well, a _grand_ hotel. Marble floors, red carpets, rich guests with no regards for the people who are forced to serve them and who, more often than not, bring their illegal, exotic cats to stay with them. The whole shebang. Like a playground for mean rich people—but then again, isn’t that just America as a whole?

It’s a terrible place to work, but Hank’s already accepted the fact that he’s going to be stuck here for years, so he should just suck it up while he’s stuck and try to make the most of it. Hey, maybe one day soon he’ll get a promotion. He _has_ been working here for six years, now.

He’s not optimistic, though.

His boss (and uber-rich owner of a fucking hotel, mind you), Mr Collins, never bothers with pleasantries. It’s always ‘do this’ or ‘do that’ or even sometimes ‘I’m about to fire you’. Hank isn’t sure whether he likes or hates it.

“Hank!” It’s the same today. Hank’s barely walked into the Perryman Grand before Mr Collins is up in his face making demands. “Somebody reported a disturbance on the sixth floor. Something about a crazy lady, or…something. I need you to take a look at it.”

One of Hank’s least favourite parts of the job is having to get rid of the drunks and the crazies. He doesn’t know why he got stuck with that duty in the first place, but apparently, his disgusting face is really good at scaring off unwanted guests. So. Drunk-duty.

Hank nods, keeping stride with Mr Collins as he walks to wherever he’s going. “Yeah, okay. I wanted to ask, though, is it…maybe possible that I could get my paycheck early this week? Early, as in, today?”

_Also, can I have several raises and a stable living situation and some therapy and also my family’s love back?_

Mr Collins looks at him, surprised. “Why? Is something wrong?” Then, immediately defensive, he says, “if you’re trying to get money in and then quit I have to tell you that—”

God, he wishes he was doing just that.

“No!” Hank says, a little fast. He tries again. “No, I just…money’s kind of short at the moment, and I was just wondering…”

Collins isn’t listening anymore, busy seeing to passing guests. “Yeah, okay. Listen, Hank? Could you check up on the penthouse, too? They’ve had a ‘do not disturb’ up since twelve in the morning.”

_Way to change the subject._

Hank purses his lips, growing anxious. He _needs_ the money. “And then we can talk about pay?”

“Yeah, sure, fine. Look, do you still have your master key?”

Hank’s hands pat down his pockets, and he finds nothing. God fucking _damn_ it. This day just keeps getting better and better. “No, I—seem to have misplaced it.”

He hates the mask of mindless politeness that he has to wear at this job. He’d love to just cuss out everybody who swears at him for being in the way, or the people who shove two-ton bags into his hands and don’t even give him a room number, or the rich white ladies who won’t stop their phone call while they’re demanding room service from him.

Collins sighs heavily, running a hand over his face. He reaches into his pocket and produces his own key card. “Fine, just—take mine, then.”

Hank groans inwardly, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. God, this job fucking _sucks._ He takes Mr Collins’ master key with a silent nod of acknowledgment. Better to fake politeness than to give in to the temptation to resign here and now. It’s getting harder and harder to ignore the voice in his head that tells him to go back and apologise for being such a major screwup, these days.

Without another word, Mr Collins goes back to ushering guests around, and Hank is left to check up on a crazy woman and a rich dude in the penthouse who, let’s face it, is probably covered in hickeys with two hookers passed out on the bed. That’s what rich people do, right?

He sighs and shakes his head as his feet move on autopilot towards the elaborate elevator in the centre of the lobby. His leg foot taps impatiently after he presses the button for the sixth floor, unceremoniously throwing himself through the doors when it finally lands in the lobby. Thankfully, there’s nobody inside that he might have to make small talk with. Thank the Lord for small mercies.

Hank was raised Mormon, so he knows exactly how bullshit most religions are. He stopped believing in God a long, _long_ time ago, but every now and then he wonders, if God is actually real, why he decided to stick all this bullshit on Hank and send him off into the world. Surely a god that cruel isn’t one that’s supposed to be worshipped. Or maybe, the bullshit came afterwards, when Hank actually started to deserve it.

Then he wonders why God didn’t just kill him and spare the rest of the world all the trouble of doing it as slowly as it is.

Hank arrives on the sixth floor with no issues, thank god. When he steps into the corridor and walks a few feet, a man he doesn’t recognise storms out of one of the ensuite rooms and knocks into Hank on his way out of the room, his shoulder grazing Hank’s own.

He’s about to curse out the stranger when he remembers the politeness he has to use, and the small noise from the room distracts him before he can open his mouth.

He can hear a woman’s shrill crying from the ensuite—which means he’s definitely in the right place. It’s not hard to imagine what’s going on.

Hank sighs, steels himself, and gently knocks on the still-ajar door before opening it to peek inside.

A near-naked woman is huddled on the bed, sobbing, with blankets strewn across the bed and floor around her. Her makeup and hair is a mess, and there’s a bruise forming on her right shoulder.  When she sees Hank, her eyes widen, and she pulls a blanket up to hide her body.

“Oh, I’m—I’m sorry,” she whispers. “Do I…do I have to leave?”

There are alarms blaring in his mind when he looks at this woman, red flags raising when he realises he can count the bruises on her arms, her neck. They could be hickeys, or they could be something more sinister.

He’s too fucking tired for this shit.

Hank gives a tight-lipped smile that he hopes looks sympathetic, and nods. “Take your time.”

The woman hesitates, then reaches out a shaking hand to him, making an effort to give him a watery smile while silent tears keep rolling down her cheeks. “Can you—can you just…sit with me? Just…for a while?”

There’s a good chance that this is a bad idea, but Hank’s too awkward and too worried not to comply. There’s something about the vulnerability this woman is showing him, despite him being a stranger, something about the way her bottom lip quivers with barely held back sobs that reminds him of comforting his son late in the night, nightmares keeping both of them awake for years on end.

He needs to stop thinking about these things.

Hank represses a sigh and tentatively steps forward until he can sit awkwardly on the edge of the king-size bed. It only takes about two seconds for the woman to lean her head on his shoulder, and Hank can feel a damp patch of tears slowly seeping in the fabric of his shitty suit.

The woman heaves a heavy sigh.

“I hate men.”

Hank can’t help but agree.

 

~~~

 

“So you’ll take the damn thing?”

The car salesman is grinning ear to ear when Connor leaves, satisfied with his (quite obvious) scam. Connor doesn’t mind about the absurd amount of money he just spent: money is but a material belonging that humans use to con each other into caring about other material belongings.

He also doesn’t mind the speed limits as he drives towards his destination—another concept that has never made much sense. He’s in a bit of a hurry right now. Surely, people in hurries don’t need to adhere to useless speed laws made up by the _government._

It’s happening, he keeps thinking to himself, as he swerves away from the other cars and narrowly misses an old woman walking across the street. It’s happening. Finally. _Finally,_ he can fulfil his purpose. His mission parameters—once forgotten, now remembered—were always so blurry, like looking through an ice-crusted window into a field of smoke and mirrors. Not this time. This time, the Universe was very direct in its orders.

Todd Williams is going to die. Connor must investigate his death.

He has a feeling that his assistant will be waiting for him.

Now he just has to find them.

 

~~~

 

Back in the elevator, Hank’s mind wanders, like it always does. He finds himself unconsciously reaching for his phone, and—

_4 missed messages: Cole_

“Shit!” Hank hisses under his breath, fumbling with his mobile as he manoeuvres his fat fingers enough to make a call. Cole never talks to him unless it’s urgent—which…fair, Hank supposes. He _is_ the lousiest excuse for a father in the world.

_‘Hey, this is Cole Anderson’s phone. I’m probably dead right now. Leave a message if you want. Or whatever.’_

Straight to voicemail it goes. Hank’s kind of relieved; this way he doesn’t have to hear the disappointment in his son’s voice and can instead face the disappointment of his receiver.

“Uh, hi, Cole. It’s Hank. I promise I’m not avoiding you. I’m just—this was unexpected,” he hesitates for a second, takes a deep breath, “I, uh, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’ll be able to get you the money in time. It’s—money’s tight, right now, and I just—sorry. I should—I’ll talk to you soon, maybe?”

The call ends with a click and Hank doesn’t feel any better.

Cole doesn’t deserve Hank’s shitty, unreliable asshole for a father. He doesn’t deserve the uncertainty of whether he’ll be able to pay for his medication every month or not. Hank wishes he could travel back in time and beat the shit out of past-Hank’s dumb ass. He wishes he could have been a better father, a better person. Maybe none of this shit would be happening.

The elevator stops on the eighteenth floor.

Hank doesn’t think much of it, until the doors open and there’s nobody there. Damn these old fucking things. It’s not like this hotel is rich enough to fix pretty much everything in this place and then some, or anything. He reaches for the button again, about to press it, then—

A voice filters into his range of hearing, steadily growing closer.

“…no, this was all _your_ fault! You’re _bringing_ them all here! Don’t you fucking—wait.” A shadowy silhouette pokes its head around the corner of the elaborate corridor, then pushes something backwards and disappears. “Shit! _Shit_ , we have to _go_!”

Hank just stares dumbly forwards while his mind runs in circles, gaping, unsure of what to do. The eighteenth floor is currently off-limits, closed for renovations. Nobody should be up here. The goddamn elevator button for this floor isn’t even working.

Who the fuck would be up here?

There’s a protocol for reporting suspicious characters, but suddenly Hank’s memory is drawing a blank.

The elevator closes its doors again, barring Hank from doing anything more than continue to be confused.

He woke up today with a sense of oddness, but he didn’t think anything strange would end up happening. His life is boring like that. This isn’t even—It’s probably just a couple of drunk idiots. Or something.

Still, Hank can’t shake the feeling of dread hanging over his shoulders, a dark cloud weighing him down.

As the elevator ascends, the radio attached to Hank’s belt buzzes with static, and then Mr Collins’ voice crackles through the receiver.

_“Hank? Where are you? Have you reached the penthouse yet?”_

Hank blinks and picks up the radio.

“I…I don’t know.”

He didn’t mean to say that. He _meant_ to say that he just saw a suspicious character on the eighteenth floor, and recommended somebody investigating it.

_“What do you mean you don’t know? Get to the penthouse, Hank!”_

Then he’s gone. Hank waits to arrive at the penthouse, tapping his foot impatiently, sudden anxiety resting in his chest. He wants to go home and sleep for seven years, maybe go buy some cheap whiskey and drink until he passes out. Forever.

There’s an air of danger to the hotel now, hanging heavy in the atmosphere. He doesn’t know how or why, but Hank feels like something bad’s about to happen. And he’s pretty sure the person he just saw has something to do with it.

He’d blame it on paranoia if he hadn’t been enrolled in the Academy. If he didn’t know his instincts as well as he does.

So when the elevator arrives at its destination and everything is dark, lights flickering in the hall, Hank can’t say he’s surprised. When there’s a deafening silence choking up his ears, a weight pressing down on his chest, he knows that his suspicions were right.

And despite the fact that every instinct in Hank’s mind is screaming at him to leave, he needs to know if everything’s okay.

(And he needs to earn this month’s paycheck.)

He walks forward, tentative, eyes fixed on the penthouse’s grand door. It’s open, he realises at second glance. Slightly ajar, a crack of deathly pale light filtering into the otherwise haunted hallway. Like a scene from a horror film, right before the killer jumps out of the open door to kill the protagonist.

If this weren’t such an unnerving situation, Hank might laugh at the irony. It seems he didn’t need his master key after all. Mr Collins can suck his ass.

As it is, he doesn’t laugh, doesn’t even think about it. He’s right outside the door, and he knows it smells like blood. He knows the metallic stench of blood all too well, a reminder of the smell emanating from the bathroom the night his mother found her husband dead in the bath.

He should stop, he knows. Stop before he’s ruined the rest of his illusion. Pretend to be a bystander, not notice anything, leave it alone. Don’t look.

Don’t look.

Don’t _look._

He pushes the door open.

 

~~~

 

There are few things Gavin can say about himself that bathe him in holy light, but one of those few things is his world-class bullshit detector.

It’s going off like crazy when the shady dude commissioning him shows him some kind of machine and demands that Gavin fix it without even giving him any blueprints. The warnings get even louder when he accidentally catches a glimpse of the military-grade guns and shit in the back of Shady Dude’s car.

But he does what he’s told, both for the money and the hope that he won’t be shot dead when he’s finished. Hopefully, if he does a good job, he’ll be allowed out of the situation alive.

Plus, the electronics and technology in the machine are actually pretty interesting.

It definitely doesn’t look like something you’d find in your average, _middle-class_ death machines. There are glowing blue bits and wires going nowhere and a bunch of inscriptions that literally look like they’re written in some alien language.

He’s got the alien-machine hooked up to his shitty old Macintosh laptop—god help him, he knows—and he realises that this damn thing has a _Wi-Fi signal._

“So, uh, where’d you get this?” Gavin says in an attempt to make conversation. “Some E.T motherfucker land and present it to you? What even is it, some sort of mind-control device?”

Of course, he’s met with silence. Damn, evil-looking government officials are assholes. Shady Dude could at least try to be polite. He _does_ have the upper hand here, what with all the guns in his fuckin’ black van.

Yeah, it’s a black van. Like the ones you’d see in those Area 51 movies. This situation is like something out of an old movie, and Gavin, he isn’t loving it.

Sure, he’s dealt with criminals before. He usually _only_ deals with criminals. Hell, he’s even let a couple of them fuck him in the past. But this sort of crazy government scheme? Yeah, he usually doesn’t deal like this. The government is kind of the thing he wants _off_ his back.

If only Shady Dude was granting him full immunity for this.

He’s not, of course. That would be too easy.

What kind of government person has that many guns in the back of their van, though? That just makes Gavin suspicious.

He plops in his earbuds and tries to drown out his apprehension beneath ninety decibels of Abba.

_—dancing queen; young and sweet, only seventeen—_

The music’s so loud he can’t hear anything else. He can’t hear the sound of another car pulling up behind the black van, can’t hear the brief scuffle of feet in gravel before Shady Dude falls to the ground, blood pooling around him.

Gavin happens to glance aside—which, when he looks back on this later, will have saved his life—and sees a man, wielding a fucking machete, mind you, stalking towards him.

You know in movies and books and pretty much every type of media there is, people say you freeze up when you’re faced with death? How the fear gets so bad you’re just…paralysed? You can’t move, can’t scream for help, can’t defend yourself.

Yeah, this isn’t like that.

Gavin can’t help the (very manly) scream when he scrambles to his feet, tossing his old laptop in the air as a distraction. He’s moving almost immediately, climbing up a concrete slope on his hands and knees and breaking into a sprint before he’s even properly upright.

“Hey!” The crackhead chasing him yells.

Gavin, being the waste of oxygen that he is, takes the time to stick up his middle finger behind him at the person currently trying to kill him. He can’t get a good look at the murderer’s face, but he knows from movies and the such that he’s gonna be disfigured and fucking terrifying to look at.

He’s really cursing his F grade in high school P.E right now. God damn Mrs Gatsby and everything she has to offer. Gavin’s lungs are already burning with the strain of staying alive, and if he manages to get away, he knows his legs won’t thank him in the morning.

He doesn’t have much time to think about how unfit he is, however, because all of a sudden the toe of his boot catches on a rock and he’s tumbling to the ground, grunting, and then shrieking when the crazy dude tailing him slides down to follow him.

Gavin scrambles backwards, holding one hand out, pleading.

“Hey, hey, let’s talk about this— _fuck!”_

The murderer slows down and stops with the machete poised right at the base of Gavin’s throat, steely blue eyes sparking with intensity.

“Connor Stern, you are a _dead man,”_ he snarls.

Gavin swallows, opens his mouth, closes it again. He has no fucking clue what’s going on.

“Who the fuck is Connor Stern?”

Blue Eyes blinks, taken aback. “You’re...not Connor Stern?”

“Fuck no! I don’t even know who that is!”

“Then why did you run?” Blue Eyes demands. “If you hadn’t run I wouldn’t have had to chase you!”

Is he fucking _kidding_?

“Because you have a _machete,”_ Gavin says, incredulous, a little braver now that it seems he’s not the actual target. “And I don’t wanna die today, thank you very much.”

His aggressor glances down at the bloodied machete in his hands, as though he’s only just remembered that it’s there. He seems to be thinking deeply for a moment, but Gavin only really cares that he’s not currently being stabbed.

“Nine.” Blue Eyes grunts.

“Excuse me?”

“Name’s Nine.”


End file.
